During the past few years Cajsa von Zeipel’s bevy of teenage girls have invaded the Swedish art scene. In Stockholm we have seen the challenging sculpture Pretty Vacant outside the MOOD shopping mall and the Gothenburg Museum of Art has acquired Seconds in Ecstasy for their permanent collection, where it is currently on display with works by, among others, Carl Milles. In the Artist’s Home at Millesgården, von Zeipel’s elongated, scantily-clad, monumental sculptures encounter Milles’ classicist figures. A meeting that creates sparks! We eagerly await!

”Ponytail, hooves and horns on the forehead vs. ponytail, platform shoes and a shitty attitude.

Figurative sculpture, white surface, long and slender ideals. What has happened to Swedish plaster during the last 100 years?

Zoo Collective moves into Carl Milles’ studio, primarily to tease, chit chat and get Milles down on all fours. Carl Milles’ fascination with Greek mythology resulted in a significant number of sculptures of mythological creatures in which the boundary between human and animal is erased. Milles is not alone in this. Zoo Collective rides on the strong historical tradition of using the animal kingdom as a tool to exemplify human psychological characteristics.

The encounter with Milles’ works will be the third time that I relate to a historical collection. The first time was in the Nike Gallery at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm where ”Seconds into Ecstasy” was presented; a giant stripper who challenged Nike with her long wing-like legs that parried Nike’s headless neck.

The second time was at the Gothenburg Museum of Art, where the work ”Runkballe” was displayed in the Sergel Gallery while the classic collection was draped with white covers in the installation ”Shy”.

Cajsa von Zeipel, 17-12-2014The opening on 21 February will coincide with the release of von Zeipel?s first book, PRO-ANATOMY, which takes its starting point in how the artist?s fascination and obsession with the body developed into an interest in sculpture, comprising material from 2007- 2014.

Cajsa von Zeipel was born in 1983 in Gothenburg, was educated at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and has held several solo and group exhibitions in Sweden and abroad.